COCAWORLDS at Taller Boricua
Presented as
part of BotanicÁrte
Location
Taller Boricua Galleries, Harlem, NYC
Date
March 8 – May 11, 2024
COCAWORLDS made its debut in New York as part of the exhibition BotanicÁrte at Taller Boricua in Harlem. Curated by Liana Collective—formed by Colombian artists and researchers Juan Pablo Caicedo, Giselly Mejía, and Angélica Cuevas—this exhibition marked the beginning of a year-long curatorial investigation into the coca plant as a symbol of resilience, healing, and resistance across Latin America.
Through the work of Colombian artists Edinson Quiñones, Anyi Ballesteros, and the collective NOMASMETÁFORAS, COCAWORLDS introduced three powerful perspectives on the coca plant. Using photography, video, textiles, and everyday objects, the artists proposed new visual and political languages to address the historical wounds and social stigma surrounding coca.
The exhibition was structured around three thematic axes: Coca-Plant, Coca-Politics, and Coca Wor(l)ds. These sections explored the plant’s medicinal and nutritional roles, its agency and sacredness, and the structural violence imposed through its criminalization. Visitors were invited to consider coca not as a narcotic precursor, but as a living being central to Indigenous cosmologies, political organizing, and community care.
COCAWORLDS unfolded a rich landscape of geopolitical tensions, healing technologies, cultural memory, and mystical relations between coca, language, nature, and divinity. It offered a powerful counter-narrative to dominant representations of the plant and opened space for speculative futures rooted in justice, sovereignty, and ecological balance.
This first iteration was part of a larger research project that includes the contributions of twelve Latin American artists working in dialogue with the coca plant. The project also involved collaborators from the Colombia Studies Group in New York, as well as Indigenous elders, photographers, designers, and researchers whose expertise helped shape the curatorial vision.
Presented within BotanicÁrte—curated by Andrea Sofía Matos—the exhibition connected to broader conversations on art, wellbeing, and botanical knowledge, particularly within Afro-Caribbean and Indigenous traditions. The wider show also featured artists Gina Goico and Misla, and explored the energetic and spiritual dimensions of plant-based practices.
COCAWORLDS at Taller Boricua was made possible through the support of the New York City Department of Youth & Community Development, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, Materials for the Arts, Ponce Bank, Goya Foods, and individual contributors.
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